05/02/2022
Offering both a dire warning and a path forward, this ultimately optimistic treatise surveys the bleak reality of climate change projections and makes the case that current mitigation pacts like the Paris Accords will ultimately do too little to stave off human and environmental catastrophe. “Meeting the goal of net zero by 2050 in no way guarantees the survival of human society as we know it or even that of homo sapiens as a species,” Fiekowsky writes. But there’s reason to hope: “climate restoration,” he argues, “is not only feasible, but, once started, will pay for itself.” Moreover, he argues that this restoration—an effort to "restore the safe, healthy levels of greenhouse gasses last seen on Earth over a century ago”—can be achieved by 2050. Climate Restoration offers guidance on how to move “from hope to science and confidence.”
Hence, “climate restoration,” the development of technologies not just to reduce carbon dioxide emissions but to remove already emitted carbon from the atmosphere at a rate of at least 50 gigatons a year for two decades. To that end, Fiekowsky, an MIT-trained engineer, entrepreneur, and philanthropist, presents four potential climate restoration methods, each considered for his scalability, permanence, and likelihood of actually being financeable. This practical approach is rooted in the belief that, in the absence of political will to save the world, market solutions could, though he acknowledges that “profitability and restoring the climate are separate goals which overlap only in rare cases.”
With inviting clarity and an engaging optimism, Fiekowsky considers four promising solutions (creating limestone out of CO2; building seaweed and marine permacultures; iron fertilization; enhanced atmospheric methane oxidation), presenting the possibilities with persuasive power. He simplifies the science for easy comprehension, and makes the case with such hopeful vigor that the book becomes something rare: a dead-serious, no-illusions look at climate change that doesn’t stir despair.
Takeaway: A persuasively hopeful look at four possible methods of removing carbon from the atmosphere—and maybe saving the species.
Great for fans of: Katherine Hayhoe’s Saving Us, Paul Hawken's Regeneration.
Production grades Cover: A- Design and typography: A Illustrations: A Editing: A Marketing copy: A